Getting into the Bible

SOMETIME IN 1974

It was late at night and I needed to get my 6 or 7 hours of sleep, but could not sleep for the life of me. I had this strong feeling it was because I didn't read my bible for a few days, so I promised to myself and to God that I would read the next day... I still couldn't sleep. I tried and tried, but I still couldn't sleep.

Finally, after about 30 minutes of this, I got up, grabbed my Bible and gently but firmly slammed my Bible on the table and said, "God, I hope your happy." As I read that night I felt blessed...like God was happy. From that day forward I could not sleep at night unless I finished my devotions.

Now there were occasional days that I wish this weren't the case, but it has done me much good - today I teach the Bible at a local college. I would never had the Bible knowledge I do without those endless hours of Bible study.

At first I started reading the Bible 45 minutes a day, which grew to an hour a day. But one day I sat down and figured out that if I memorized only one verse a day I could memorize the NT in less than 22 years. So I figured I was 21 at the time and if I started right away I would reach the old age of 43 and have the entire NT memorized. I decided that rather than going to favorite verses I should memorize books of the Bible, starting with the book of James.

Every day I memorized one verse and went over the verses I had already memorized to make sure that I didn't forget. My routine shifted around until I ended up memorizing a new verse 5 times a week and then to 4(giving myself a break a couple of days a week) and going over 60 versees already memorized.

This continued until around 1995 when I finally gave up. By that time I had memorized half of Matthew, most of John, 2 chapters in Acts, all of Paul's writings, Hebrews, 1,2,&3 John and Jude, several other chapters and Psalms were also in the bag. Despite all this I felt like I let myself down because I didn't finish the NT.

After taking a one year course in Greek I added Greek to my devotions and eventually taught myself Biblical Hebrew as well. At the height of my devotional life I was spending over 3 hours a day in devotions.

All this because one night I couldn't sleep.